story9911.xml

story9911.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-09-11

I can remember watching the towers fall. I can remember seeing the people fall before the television stations decided to stop showing it. Perhaps they decided to stop showing it once they they recognized that what they were seeing was people jumping to their deaths. I remember imagining what it would be like to be the husband of one of those women that worked at the World Trade Center and not knowing if I had just watched her leap to her death, not knowing whether she was safely on the ground far enough away from the tower that just fell or if she had burned or was buried in rubble.

Thankfully, I only had to imagine those things because my wife was right there next to me, holding my hand, weeping as the stark realization that our world had forever changed washed over us. We clung to each other, feeling suddenly vulnerable here almost in the middle of the country. We could be hurt here. Maybe they couldn?t get to us directly but they could hurt the ones we loved they could affect the way we went about our daily activities, scaring us into a certain paralysis.

The events of 9-11 did scare us. I remember the eerie sensation of hearing a jet in the sky, knowing that all air travel had been grounded and going out to look up at the fighter jets flying over. I told my wife this. I told her I was still scared. I told her I had nightmares. She told me, too, how watching those planes crash into the towers had changed her; how hearing about the personal tragedies and also the tales of courage would change her life forever; how each day would hold infinitely more meaning for her. I don?t remember her saying that each day with me would hold infinitely more meaning.

It didn?t matter then. What mattered was that she was there; that I wasn?t on the news recounting my last phone call with her; that I didn?t need to recall the last words she said as she left that morning. Now I distinctly remember her last phone call, her last words to me that she said before she left.

I don?t remember the moment when things went wrong. I do remember when she said to me that ?something is just not right in our marriage?. You remember those things that change your life forever. We were on a plane somewhere over the Midwest heading from denver to see her brother in Florida. I could not have been more astonished had I looked out my office window and seen that same plane headed directly for me.

After the events of 9-11 people looked back with the power of hindsight and said, ?Well of course this was going to happen. The U.S. has for too long imposed its will on other countries, on the people of the Middle East.? In hindsight, I look back and shouldn?t be astonished that her new world did not include a vision of me, but I still am.

Today I watch the memorials of what occurred two years ago, and I remember exactly where I was, who I was with, what I was doing. I remember that imagined agony of not knowing where she was. I don?t know where she is now. I don?t know if she is thinking of me. I don?t know if she looks back on that day and even remembers me there, remembers us hugging and crying together, clinging to each other as if we were all that we had left in this world.

It?s a new world now. The events of September 11 will remain in my mind forever. There is no one else I can ever share that experience with.